Category Archive for 'Google'

Your Google Account was suspended as part of our fraud prevention efforts, based on violations of our Terms of Service and Terms of Sale for Devices. After reviewing your appeal, we are re-enabling your account.
Google takes violations of our terms very seriously, and we ask that you review relevant terms and product policies to ensure that you understand them. Repeated violations of our terms may lead to account termination.
In order to access your Google account, please sign in. When you sign in, you will be asked to verify a security code via SMS. Once you verify the code, you will be able to access your account again.
Last but not least, we wanted to remind you that Google users can always export and download their data from Google products like Gmail, Photos, and Drive while their account is active. In a few easy steps, you can create an archive to keep for your records or backup your data to another service. More information about backing up your data can be found at google.com/takeout.”

I find it hard to understand why Google only allows you to download your data if your account is active. They claim the data belongs to you, but if you violate any of their terms you will lose the ability to retrieve your data.

My hope was for that to get Google’s attention and put pressure on them to respond.

And indeed Google has just sent me the following statement,

“We identified a scheme in which consumers were asked to purchase Pixel devices on behalf of a reseller, who then marked-up the cost of those devices in order to resell them to other customers. We prohibit the commercial resale of devices purchased through Project Fi or the Google Store so everyone has an equal opportunity to purchase devices at a fair price. Many of the accounts suspended were created for the sole purpose of this scheme. After investigating the situation, we are restoring access to genuine accounts for customers who are locked out of many Google services they rely on.”

As of yet none of the suspended accounts have been restored, but hopefully that will happen soon and I’ll update this post again when that occurs. Google did not respond with a timeframe of when they can expect to regain access to their accounts. Many people have been devastated by losing their access to Google services over terms that they didn’t read. They’re not blameless, but let’s face it, how many non-lawyers actually read all the terms?

Kudos to Google for agreeing to restore their online identities. I still wonder though if a human authorized the account suspensions or if it was triggered by an algorithm. Either way, it’s scary to think about how much power Google has over our lives.

As for me, I got my Google Takeout order today and plan to request backups of my Google data on a weekly basis. Many others have moved their email to private servers and other hosts in order to diversify their online presence in case they ever run afoul of Google’s terms.

They also got an email stating that all of their data will be deleted if they do not successfully appeal their suspension:

It turns out the common denominator is that they had all bought Google Pixel phones and shipped them to a phone dealer in New Hampshire who paid them a profit on each phone. There is no sales tax in New Hampshire and the phones are then resold to others.

The problem is that many of them didn’t read the terms that they agreed to when buying the phone from the Google store. Those state “You may only purchase Devices for your personal use. You may not commercially resell any Device, but you may give the Device as a gift.”

I did some research and found the dealer, who feels awful about the situation. There are over 200 people who are locked out of their Google accounts currently. Some of those people used multiple Google accounts in order to place orders for more than 5 phones and they are locked out of all of the accounts. The dealer is more than happy to return all the phones to Google if it will rectify the situation.

The dealer has been ordering phones from Google in this manner since the original Nexus and has never had an issue. In total a few thousand phones were ordered this time, which is fewer phones than were ordered in the past. However this time was the first time that they were ordered through Project Fi, as they were shipping out faster that way. The phones were all ordered at the full retail price and about 500 orders were cancelled by Google.

Google has apparently closed the accounts of everyone who shipped their phones directly to his address in New Hampshire, regardless of how many phones the account ordered or whether the phones actually shipped or were cancelled by Google.

The account closure includes all of Google’s services. The people affected don’t have access to Gmail, Google Drive, Google Voice, or anything from Google. They don’t have any access to gift cards, bills, travel confirmations, work documents, etc that were saved in their Gmail accounts.

Worse yet, emails that are sent to their Gmail accounts are being bounced back as undeliverable. Even if Google relents and reactivates their accounts they will never know what emails they missed while the account was locked.

Some people had family photos saved in their drive that are now lost. It’s the 21st century version of losing priceless mementos in a house fire.

Some people are also locked out of other online accounts that require email authentication, which of course they can no longer access. Many accounts require email access in order to change a password or update your email. There’s a world of pain in store for people who have lost their primary email account.

I’m not defending those who violated the terms of the sale, but I do think it is heavy-handed for Google to block access to all of their services for doing so. Was violating Google’s phone resale policy really worthy of an effective digital death penalty?

One DDF member even claims that his Google account, that didn’t order a phone, was banned just for having a recovery account that was banned for ordering a phone.

Quite frankly it’s scary to think about how much I rely upon Google for everyday life. Losing everything that I’ve accumulated with Google for the past 15 years would be devastating.

There are a few lessons here for everyone:

1. Don’t mess around with Google or any company that you simply can’t live without.

I’m guilty of this myself and it’s a good thing that they didn’t have this kind of account auditing in place when my friends and I passed hundreds of thousands of dollars around with Google Checkout when they were offering free credit card processing in 2006. The boatload of free miles were great, but were not enough to live without Google. Then again, Google wasn’t as critical to my day to day life 10 years ago.

2. Ignorance of the terms isn’t an excuse, so be sure to read them.

3. Backup your Google data often with Google Takeout. That page is not accessible if you are banned. I’ve already started the process of having my information delivered to me so that I can back it up locally and plan on doing so on a regular basis in the future.

People who have not been able to access their accounts have appealed to Google and that appeal is still in process.

It seems to me that a warning should have been issued before closing account access. At a bare minimum Google should have allowed emails to be sent to their accounts and not bounce back to the sender as undeliverable during the appeal process. And at the very least they should be allowed to download their saved data.

But hopefully they quickly get back access to their Gmail and other vital Google services where they weren’t in violation of Google’s terms.

There is normally a free 3 month trial that you can cancel at any point. At the end of the trial you will be moved onto a $95 annual unlimited use membership plan or you can cancel and pay a $4.99 per delivery fee with no membership fee. The membership includes a free additional member as well. Google will email you a week before your free trial ends.

Step 3: Shop from Google Express and at redeem the $15 off $15 code that you’ll see at checkout.

Google Express is pretty awesome. Whenever we need an item from the grocery store or Costco we’ll just order it and have it the next morning!

They deliver or ship items from Costco, Walgreens, Whole Foods, and many more stores that vary based on your location right to your door overnight for the same cost as in-store. If Costco has a coupon for an item, like $2 off Ibuprofen as they do now, you’ll also get that coupon price.

You can even pay for your Costco items with an AMEX.

You do need a Costco membership to order from Costco at regular prices and perishables are only available in select areas. In some areas you can order from Costco stores without a membership, but you’ll pay a 15% premium.

There is normally a free 3 month trial that you can cancel at any point. At the end of the trial you will be moved onto a $95 annual unlimited use membership plan or you can cancel and pay a $4.99 per delivery fee with no membership fee. The membership includes a free additional member as well.

Google Express is pretty awesome. They deliver items from Costco, Walgreens, Whole Foods, and more stores right to your door for the same cost as in-store. If Costco has a coupon for an item, like $3.60 off Kleenex as they do now, you’ll also get that coupon price.

You do need a Costco membership to order from Costco at regular prices and perishables are only available in select areas. You can now also order from Costco stores without a membership, but you’ll pay a 15% premium.

Login online to check your AMEX offers and see if you are targeted for an additional $15 off $30 at Google Express. This offer expires this Sunday, 7/31.

All of my personal primary and secondary cards had the offer and I saved the offer to each of my cards by having each card open to the offer in a different tab in Firefox, which I find works best. You can also register additional user cards on your primary login or on their own login to enroll them in this offer as well.

For new users a $45 order will be just $15 if they redeem the $15 signup credit and have an AMEX Offer. It’s hard to beat 50% or 67% off at Costco!

I’m currently posting from Svalbard, as close as you can fly commercially (and more importantly with miles) to the North Pole. My Project Fi phone has perfect 4G LTE service, even in this isolated region of the planet.

I bought a Project Fi compatible phone a couple months ago with this trip in mind. There was no credit check to start service. I was able to pause service until the start of the trip for free. You can pause service for up to 3 months at a time with no limit on extending the service pause. When you do activate the service the cost is $20 per month for unlimited calling and texting. Data is $10 per GB and if you only use 100MB for example you’ll only be charged $1.

International data is charged at the same rate as in the US. International texting is free. International phone calls are 20 cents/minute.

Verizon won’t let me activate their TravelPass plan as I have grandfathered unlimited data, but Project Fi has been a better deal anyway!

Thanks to very clear directions and OBi setup tool within a few minutes I had my OBi switched over to their service and got a new number. I then had Google Voice forward calls made to Google Voice number to the new VestaLink number. I verified the Google Voice number by answering the call in Gmail and entering the 2 digit verification code using the Gmail dialer pad.

Now here’s the rub, their rates are supposed to go up by 20% tomorrow. The trial gives 60 free minutes, so try it now and see if you like it. If you do, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid plan now before the rates go up. Currently a plan with 500 minutes of monthly talk time is $29.99 for 1 year ($2.49/month) or $49.99 for 2 years ($2.08/month). A plan with 2,000 minutes of monthly talk time is $49.99 for 1 year ($4.17/month) or $74.99 for 2 years ($3.12/month). A plan with unlimited monthly talk time is $59.99 for 1 year ($4.99/month) or $89.99 for 2 years ($3.75/month).

All plans have a 30 day money-back guarantee.

Are you switching to VestaLink? Find another easy solution? Will you just give up your OBi completely? Hit the comments!

Google Shopping Express has been operating in Northern California but is now expanding to LA and Manhattan with more expansion to come. Brooklyn and more LA zip codes will be added within a few months as well.

Google will deliver goods from your local stores to you on the same day that you order them, free of charge! Just select the items you want and Google will buy them and deliver them to your doorstep!

You can signup for a free 6 month Google Shopping Express membership and get $10 off your first order. They aren’t saying what it will cost after 6 months, but membership won’t auto-renew without your permission.

Participating stores include Costco (membership required), Target, Toys R Us, Walgreens, and many other local grocery and other stores.

Google will even return items for you if you ordered them via Shopping Express…how awesome is that!?!

You probably have realized by now that Google has clamped down and ended the free processing without limits. I do wish that the $250 was a free monthly limit where consumers would be able to make micro-payments to their friends free of charge (similar to Amazon Payments though far more convenient as you don’t have to leave your inbox) but the $250 is just a one-time limit on an account. At any rate, via Google’s own Peter Hazlehurst who has continued to keep us in the loop:

Hi folks,

As you may have noticed, we’ve had to introduce the fees a bit sooner than we expected because it became a little crazy what some people were trying to do.

We are letting users send up to $250 *cumulatively* on the system with card fees, and you can always send from a bank account for free. This way we can let a lot of new users into the system, get a feel for things and then if they are happy with it, link a bank account…

Thanks all, and sorry we had to turn on the fees. We didn’t really have a choice.

——————————————————————

Update #1, 05/28: Peter has responded to everyone’s questions and has revealed his DDF username (phazlehurst) in case you needto contact him via private message (I sure hope he doesn’t get hundreds of requests for a penny like I got over the past week :D)
In short he says:
1. Please do use Google Wallet and send money to friends and family for legitimate reasons, but don’t do it to just generate miles or you will be warned and then you will have your Wallet capabilities deactivated.
2. Watching people line up conga style is so much more fun then just rolling out Google Wallet to everyone 🙂
3. He seems happy to entertain feedback and provide more answers, so go ahead and ask away in the comments!

As far as the naysayers go about this being a fake, Whois (among other factors including his DDF username info and his refreshingly honest answers) prove this that Peter is legit:

Of course I used my grandfathered Chase Freedom Exclusives card so that I’ll earn 11 miles for sending that penny 😀

There is a hard limit of $9,999.99 that you can send at once. If you try entering more than that you’ll get this cute message:

While there doesn’t appear to be any limit on how much you can send in total, Google is not going to like it if you send very large amounts or if you pass money back and forth between accounts and they will likely close your Wallet accounts if you do that. So take it easy and don’t go sending $5,000 to meet a spend threshold in one shot unless you’re willing to risk testing the limits and possibly losing your ability to use Google Wallet. Hopefully they’ll warn you before closing your Wallet account but they don’t have to.

You just gotta’ love the plethora of manufactured spend methods we have today to meet those climbing spend thresholds. Between this new development, Amazon Payments, Bluebird, Vanilla Reloads, Vanilla Debit cards, Visa/MC gift cards with pins (that can earn you quintuple points and) that can be cashed out via WalMart ATMs, Bill Pay, or even Money Orders this is truly a golden era. Perhaps not as scalable as those gold dollar coins I used to get by the truckload, but cards are a whole lot lighter than coins!

Quick FAQ’s about this device:
-It works with any regular phone.
-It makes regular outgoing and incoming calls with caller ID.
-Calls are free from anywhere in the world to US and Canada numbers.
-You can call international numbers for very little per minute. Israel is 2 cents per minute to landlines and 10 cents for cell phones. All rates are listed here: https://www.google.com/voice/rates
-You can only port a cell phone number to Google, so if you want another number you’ll have to first port it to a prepaid cell service (page plus, att, tmobile, etc) and then port it to google.
-It costs nothing per month after you buy the machine.
-You don’t need any other phone service, just broadband (DSL/FIOS/Cable) internet service.
-You do not need a computer.
-You do not need a phone jack.
——————————————————————-

The device is a conduit between your broadband connection and a landline phone for free phone calls with no monthly service fee and no cost for making calls!

It performs all kinds of tricks, but the main feature that I got it for was its very easy setup with Google Voice. It works with any regular or cordless landline phone for free incoming calls, free outgoing calls to the US and Canada, and Google Voice’s dirt-cheap international dialing rates. Your computer does not need to be on for your phone to work.

You can also plug in a landline phone, or another VOIP service like Ooma or Magic Jack, into the device and you’ll be able to access multiple different lines of service from your landline phone.

-I opened up a new Google Voice account (there’s a limit of 1 per email address) and got a vanity number. (Google Voice allows you to search their database of free phone numbers for any combination of numbers or letters)

-I charged the cordless phone for 24 hours and then set it up. With the easy instructions I was able to set it up in less than 15 minutes and the call quality has been very good! It displays the caller ID number for incoming calls and Gmail will even notify you of and transcribe voicemails!

Google has already announced that the free calling will last through 12/31/11. After that nobody knows, but here’s hoping Google continues to allow the free calls forever!

The Galaxy line of phones are awesome. A removable battery plays no small part of that as you can always have a charged battery with an inexpensive separate battery charger and never have to plug your phone into the wall. With the huge screens on Galaxy phones along with Google Maps you’ll also never need to buy another GPS. And Android Jelly Bean’s incredible Google Now service kicks Siri to the curb.

Not my typical post here, but if you are a Verizon Galaxy Nexus user like I am this update will make you fall in love with your smartphone all over again. After playing with it for the past few hours it’s obvious that Jelly Bean is bar none the best mobile operating system out there, but feel free to talk about that and more in the tech forum on DDF.

The “hack” goes like this.
1. Connect to a Wi-Fi network.
2. Go into Settings>Apps>All.
3. Scroll down to and click “Google Services Framework”
4. Click on “Force stop” and press OK.
5. Click on “Clear data” and press OK.
6. Go into Settings>About phone>System updates and you will be able to download Jelly Bean to your phone.

Post a comment if that works for you. And Galaxy S III owners don’t fret, you’ll have Jelly Bean goodness very soon as well!

Plenty of great flight research features (search for lowest cost desired length of trip over many months, search for flights to any city, search for a specific airline alliance, search for specific connection cities, length of flight/cost graph, etc) in a package that may be easier for many people to use then my personal favorite airfare search engine, the ITA software tool that it draws its functionality from.

When you find a flight you want you can buy it directly from the airline.

The OBi100 and OBi110 will work perfectly as a free phone line with Google Voice. The only difference between the OBi100 and the OBi110 is that the 100 model does not have a line option that allows you to plug in a landline phone, or another VOIP service like Ooma or Magic Jack, into the device that lets you access multiple different lines of service from your landline phone.

The OBi100 will work just fine as a free phone line with Google Voice. The only difference between the OBi100 and the OBi110 is that the 100 model does not have a line option that allows you to plug in a landline phone, or another VOIP service like Ooma or Magic Jack, into the device that lets you access multiple different lines of service from your landline phone.

Gmail is rolling out free phone calls for all US based gmail accounts!

When logged into Gmail just click on “Call Phone” from the Gmail chat menu. After downloading a voice plugin you’ll be able to make phone calls right from your inbox! Calls to US and Canadian phone numbers are currently free, and international rates are extremely cheap as well!

You will need to have a microphone and speakers on your computer for it to work.

If you go to google.com/voice you’ll also be able to get a free phone number that will ring in your inbox when someone calls you.

If your account has been configured to make phone calls, you’ll be able to call phones in the US and Canada for free even if you’re in another country.

A Dansdeals forum user confirmed that someone in Israel for example, was able to use the service to make a call from Israel to the US for free. If 2 people in Israel, or anywhere else in the world, both have free phone calls from their inboxes they’ll be able to call each other for free!

-Use the Gizmo5 VOIP to make phone calls to anywhere in the US and receive phone calls with your Google Voice number for free!

You can also use Google Voice and Gizmo5 to work with any other VOIP device for free nationwide calls. You can use a device like this $53 Internet Phone Adapter to make VOIP phone calls from a real phone for free.

I’ve been an avid iGoogle fan since day 1. It allows me to have the RSS feeds from all of the sites that I visit on 1 clean home page. Yesterday Google decided to mess around with what was a perfect interface and make it very cluttered and anti-user friendly.

Sorry if this is old news, but I just found out (totally by accident) that Gmail Chat is now interoperable with AIM!

To sign into your AIM account up while in Gmail Chat just click on the “options” button under the Gmail chat box and then login to your AIM account. You will now be able to chat with your Gmail Chat or AIM buddies. Your AIM buddies are distinguishable from your Gmail buddies by the little AIM icon next to each AIM buddy!

Yay, No more having to deal with that over-bloated AIM adware application ever again!

Google maps by default takes you on the Grand Central West to the congested BQE.

Let’s say you want to go on the Jackie Robinson instead. Just put your mouse at the beginning of the route and a white square will show up saying “Drag to change route.” Drag the box to the right about an inch to force the route onto the Grand Central West. Google will now automatically reroute you over the Jackie Robinson.

You can right click on the Start/pause/end points to remove them. Additionally you can right click anywhere on the map to add a new destination, or to add an origin if you have removed all start/stop points.

I thought I wrote about this a while ago, but a quick search didn’t reveal anything, so here it is.Google offers free 411 service to look up business phone numbers.The neat thing about it is that Google will connect you directly to the business, so you don’t have to deal with writing down the number like with other free 411 services.Another neat feature is that Google will send you an SMS with all of the business details including their address!

Both of these access numbers are free from any phone:1-800-GOOG-4111-877-GOOG-411

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the credit card offers that appear on this site are from credit card companies from which DansDeals.com receives compensation if you are approved. Compensation impacts placement of cards on the credit card page and banner placement, but does not on the articles posted on DansDeals.com. This site does not include all credit card offers available in the marketplace, but rather focuses on travel related cards.
Editorial Note: This content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. These responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Dan's Deals LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.